[avar]

> With over 3-million dead in this singular siege alone, I think we can safely declare the Siege of Leningrad to be the biggest loss-of-life in a __singular__ military operation ever... [...]

> Nothing else in history compares. That's what I mean by total war. War on a scale and scope so massive, it makes the rest of history look puny in comparison.

> Mongols or whatever [...] but not even the Mongols starved 3+ million to death in an explicit campaign of genocide in a singular military operation.

The mongols killed up to 2 million people in less than two weeks just laying siege to one city: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Baghdad_(1258)

Is that 3 million? No, but Leningrad clearly isn't some singular event in human history when it comes to casualties.

[dragontamer]

> The mongols killed up to 2 million people in less than two weeks

I very much doubt that account. The Holocaust was 15,000 deaths-per-day at its peak, and that was a fully industrialized gas-and-bury operation.

2-million in 2 weeks is 140,000 people killed per day, or roughly 10x "more efficient" than the Holocaust at its peak.

I have severe doubts that the Mongols in the 1200s had the efficiency of the Nazi genocide operation. Just from technology alone: the Nazis were able to use poison gas and bullets to quickly and efficiently kill, as well as the use of fully loaded Trains and logistics to ensure that these death-machines were operating at maximum efficiency.